Expect the unexpected in Ukraine. Events on the ground and, more importantly, on and below the surface of the sea suggest as much.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then a comedian who played a fictional Ukrainian president in a TV series, unexpectedly ran in the 2019 election and unexpectedly won in a landslide against the political establishment.
When Russia invaded in 2022, he unexpectedly rejected offers from the West to be evacuated. And he unexpectedly repelled the Russian attack on Kyiv.
Ukraine did not fall in a matter of days or weeks, as expected, but is still fighting.
The West unexpectedly did not throw everything behind Ukraine, but selfishly and timidly continued to buy Russian gas and oil and applied only limited sanctions and provided only limited weapons for fear of a Russian nuclear retaliation.
Proof that the sanctions imposed from time to time have been too weak is that every few months the West has been able to increase sanctions that should have been so comprehensive in the first place that they could not have been increased.
So, what’s new?
Game-changer No 1. Early this month the last Russian submarine left the Mediterranean, less than a month after the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the refusal of the new Syrian regime to allow Russia continued use of its base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast.
Without that base Russian submarine and surface easy access to the Med is effectively closed. Russian warships cannot enter the Med from the Black Sea via the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits because Türkiye (whose territory is on either side of those straits) has prohibited warships from traversing them since the Russian invasion.
It means that Russia is finding it harder to protect its merchant marine, in particular, the 600-strong Russian dirty fleet of sanctions-busting oil tankers.
Game-changer No 2. The European members of NATO are growing a backbone. Russian President Vladimir Putin miscalculated when he thought Europeans would remain ever wary of giving too much support to Ukraine out of fear of high-scale (nuclear) or low-scale (cable damage) reprisal.
Two incidents show us that Europe is now fed up. This month, the Panamanian-flagged oil tanker Eventin, a rust bucket in the Dirty Fleet, lost control and became an environmental time-bomb with 100,000 barrels of oil aboard. So, German tugboats arrested the ship as they are entitled to under international law.
Meantime, another one of the Dirty Fleet, the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S, deliberately severed a critical undersea cable between Estonia and Finland. Finland, of course, has been driven to join NATO by the Russian invasion – yet another miscalculation by Putin. That is what happens when an autocrat surrounds himself with yes-men and nodding heads who dare not warn against the autocrat’s latest idiocy. (NB: President Donald Trump).
NATO’s European members have launched the Baltic Sentry mission which will arrest Dirty Fleet vessels. Without the Dirty Fleet, Russian fossil-fuel exports would collapse almost completely. Since the invasion, revenue has already fallen from $US1250 million a day to less than half of that.
The EU has joined NATO. As a result, five huge newly sanctioned LNG carriers (one pictured) have been stuck in Arctic waters since Christmas. They might not be allowed even to go home, let alone deliver their cargo.
It may be only seven ships with 593 to go, but the critical point is that a start has been made on Dirty Fleet arrests, and it will not stop. It is the beginning of the end for the Dirty Fleet and that is the beginning of the end for Putin.
Game-changer No 3. This month, Ukraine cut of the gas pipeline that takes Russian gas to European countries. Most European countries have found other sources. The remaining ones will have to follow suit, to Russia’s great cost.
Game-changer No 4. In the past week, Zelenskyy has changed his tune, aligning himself more with Trump’s view of European defence: NATO’s European members should spend a lot more, even if it is 5 per cent, he argued.
This would be the only way to deter Russian aggression permanently. He knows that 5 per cent is impossible, but he needed to say it so he could be seen to be agreeing with Trump. But the bigger point was his signal that he is not giving up the fight and there can only be peace if Ukraine gets all its territory back, bar Crimea and some other Russian-speaking areas after a plebiscite, and European troops are put on the ground in Ukraine or Ukraine given NATO membership.
Zelenskyy really only wants a more active European engagement in case the US falters. Wholesale arrests and confiscation of the Dirty Fleet would be a great start. Maybe Trump could be persuaded that a buck could be made arresting vessels of the Dirty Fleet, even if other aid is suspended,
If the economic consequences made life in Russia even grimmer and made the oligarchs question the future of their wealth under Putin, it could bring Putin down.
That this hasn’t happened already is not because sanctions have been ineffective, it is because they have not been applied early enough, widely enough, nor enforced effectively enough.
Game-changer No 5. Trump is watching these developments. Much commentary before the election suggested that Trump would sell Ukraine down the river to his mate Putin by cutting, or even cutting off, US military aid. He has suspended it, but nothing was immediately due anyway.
Could Trump change sides? Easily and paradoxically. He will change sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict because he always wants to be on the same side: the winning one. Trump is always on the same side: the side of Donald J Trump.
History tells us that lasting peace only comes after unconditional surrender or total withdrawal by the foreign force: Vietnam and Algeria are good examples. World War I tells us that an armistice just postpones the resumption of hostilities.
So, Trump, Putin and the world in general know that some sort of armistice or ceasefire deal will not lead to European peace and security. That can only come with capitulation, in this instance Russia’s capitulation, because Zelenskyy will never capitulate.
History tells us that collapse usually comes suddenly, especially if someone stands up to the bully.
O O O O
The Institute of Public Affairs has rejoiced in a surge of support in the past year for 26 January as Australia’s national day from the mid 40s to 69 per cent. Well, most nations have near 100 per cent support for their national day. It is not a simple-majority thing. That we have 30 percent against – which will never go away – is a thorn that must be resolved. Otherwise, Australia will never have a cohesive national day.
Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley’s comparison between Phillips’s First Fleet and Elon Musk’s Mars mission was off the planet. For a start, Mars truly is terra nullius.
O O O O
Trump’s demand to Denmark that he be allowed to buy Greenland is a nihilistic and existential threat to the Inuit Indigenous population of Greenland not only from a change of sovereignty but also from Trump’s global-heating policies. For the Inuit it would be “Kill, baby, kill”.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 28 January 2025.
Trump’s foremost priority is himself. He cannot apologies, express empathy for anyone or anything and his sycophantic MAGA disciples will support him only so far as it benefits them.
The Russian people have shown through history that they can bear the most egregious sufferings. Putin will survive as long as his cowered sycophantic oligarchs see benefits for themselves. Any regime change will have to be internal.
Trump may walk away from talks with Putin as he did with Kim Jong Un if he can’t ‘cut a deal’.
All the more reason for Europe to take the lead as it is their existence which is threatened.
Australia’s Anglophiles like Ley, Dutton, Abbott, Howard et al are so entranced with their British education (school, church and monarchy) and so lazy in their historical research that challenges the British history, they fail to know and recognise the facts of Australia. Usually this centres on interactions between colonialists and First Nations people, but even European discoveries of the Great South land (refer Dante for the Southern Cross) or New Holland (a clue there) and French scientific expeditions around the times of the First Fleet (refer French names in WA, Tasmania and even Sydney) escape them. Then we have the whaling industry for oil in Europe, America and Russia as ships plied the Southern Ocean. Britain, of course, protected its colonies from the French and Americans due to recent wars. An odd thing to do if the British were the only ones on Australian soil. Ah, but the flag! There’s one on the moon, too. Both are just rubbish.